X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Pro OR X-Fi Xtreme Gamer?
- Thread starter Gibbo
- Start date
Neither, stick with what you got its more than good enough. Upgrade your speakers.
If you really want to upagrade to better SQ, dont go Creative, go M-Audio.
If you need gaming EAX features and money is no problem then go for the X-Fi with the most connectors.
edit: or get a card that converts to Dolby Digital in real time.
If you really want to upagrade to better SQ, dont go Creative, go M-Audio.
If you need gaming EAX features and money is no problem then go for the X-Fi with the most connectors.
edit: or get a card that converts to Dolby Digital in real time.
pallys said:
Why would he want to do that?
You've basically said the X-Fi isn't the best for top quality music, so buy a card that encodes audio using a lossy codec?
The DDLive cards are also pretty useless in games that use EAX.Gibbo said he wants to use the card for: 'DVD/AVI/Video playback along with playing games' so IMO the X-Fi is the best card for all of these. Onboard hardware DD/DTS decoding, EAX5HD for games and decent quality analogue outputs at a good price. If he went with M-Audio he'd maybe see an increase in quality when playing music if his speakers were good enough, but he'd lose all the fancy effects in games.
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Phil99 said:Why would he want to do that?
You've basically said the X-Fi isn't the best for top quality music, so buy a card that encodes audio using a lossy codec?
Gibbo said he wants to use the card for: 'DVD/AVI/Video playback along with playing games' so IMO the X-Fi is the best card for all of these. Onboard hardware DD/DTS decoding, EAX5HD for games and decent quality analogue outputs at a good price. If he went with M-Audio he'd maybe see an increase in quality when playing music if his speakers were good enough, but he'd lose all the fancy effects in games.
Exactly. And let's be honest here, the only reason to take the M-Audio over the X-Fi is if you're working with Midi files. Anything up to semi-pro midi file work can be done on the X-Fi in any case.
Why have you posted specs? As that has anything to do with final sound quality?
You don't need hardware DTS decoding.
For games though I agree CL the best choice, however if you don't use EAX it doesn't matter.
Have you compared the two? How do you know the 192 is slightly better? It could be a huge improvement.
You don't need hardware DTS decoding.
For games though I agree CL the best choice, however if you don't use EAX it doesn't matter.
Have you compared the two? How do you know the 192 is slightly better? It could be a huge improvement.
Whoop said:Whats with all the talk about having to change mode on the X-Fi to play games, I pretty much only play games on this rig so don't want to be messing with settings each time I start up.
Whoop
The X-Fi has 3 modes; Audio Creation, Entertainment and Gaming. Audio Creation enables all the ASIO stuff, Gaming enables EAX5 and tbh I'm not entirely sure what Entertainment is meant to do.
Personally I leave mine in gaming mode as I can't tell the difference between how music sounds between Entertainment and Gaming.
Phil99 said:Why would he want to do that?
You've basically said the X-Fi isn't the best for top quality music, so buy a card that encodes audio using a lossy codec?
Gibbo said he wants to use the card for: 'DVD/AVI/Video playback along with playing games' so IMO the X-Fi is the best card for all of these. Onboard hardware DD/DTS decoding, EAX5HD for games and decent quality analogue outputs at a good price. If he went with M-Audio he'd maybe see an increase in quality when playing music if his speakers were good enough, but he'd lose all the fancy effects in games.
X-Fi isnt best for Music or DVD's IMO..
and Dolby Digital is hardly a lossy codec in practical terms eg. playing a music CD is already such poor quality that DD encode wont strip it..its like saying Dolby Digital DVD sound is NO SWEARING!because its a lossy codec..
well any non creative card supports EAX 1.0/2.0 and the newer games also support the emerging standard OpenAL.
The Dolby Digital cards are useful if he uses with a home cinema setup to watch his DVD's etc or any surround sound gaming. With an X-Fi card you have to use Creative speakers for digital output (AFAIK) because Creative use propritary connectors for this, maybe the breakout box overcomes this.
I have an X-Fi myself and I can say IMO its a card for a gamer first everything else second, it has have fancy CDMSS-3D 'psuedo' sound algorithms which is NO SWEARING! anyway...
I also found the Creative drivers poor and unstable with snaps, crackles and pops in the output.
The Intel HD Audio is actually a very good product. spend the money on better speakers imo
pallys said:
Dolby Digital isn't a codec. It's a channel division system. PCM or DTS are the most common codecs used to store Dolby Digital information. DTS Hardware decoding is offered by the creative card.
And the propritary connectors stuff is total twaddle. They have an optical in/out and 3 3.5mm jacks for analogue connections. Fairly standard. On the front box are a few extra RCA/Line and Optical in/out.
Also owning a X-Fi card myself, it's the best card I've heard. Music sounds fantastic, especially when tweaking around with the crystaliser etc. Haven't read a single review to fault it. Go have a look "google X-fi review" and you'll get a ton of them.